One Hundred nights in Ambrose
by RainboneCaink
Summary: 100 drabbles and one-shots written for the Sinclair brothers, using the infamous 100 theme prompt list.
1. 1

1. (introduction)

Ambrose was the kind of town that looked best when the sun was setting. The whole place sat in that thick, yellow light that was usually reserved for thunderstorms. The sort that the made glass and neat paintwork shine in a weird, half-assed way- Real atmospheric. It was sort of a shame that nobody else passing through took the time to appreciate that atmosphere, being preoccupied with themselves, each other, panic or their cars inexplicably misbehaving.

Bo didn't take that sort of thing for granted though. He knew the air was always still, probably down to all the trees or some shit, and always warm and smelling faintly of asphalt. From inside the pickup you couldn't tell all of that really, but Bo knew that was the way it was all the same. And for Chrissakes, he had to think of something besides how fuckin' slow he had to drive over that damn brook or he'd end up shooting something.

But the sweeping view he got when entering Ambrose after a shopping trip gave him a pretty good feeling. Man, the swept sidewalks, the shop displays, gardens… picture fuckin' perfect. Vincent spent his days in his little museum, and Bo had the town. And he'd made a damn good job of it. Well, maybe they could do with another car outside the garage. What a shame that sweet little Chevrolet would stick out like a sore thumb. No car that beautiful should be stuck at the mill, rotting away.

He'd probably end up selling it to buy a new generator- it'd pain him but it'd be worth it. When it got darker and the electric lights kicked in the boxy little buildings looked perfect. An immaculate snapshot of life… whenever, Bo didn't know, backwards fucking place was stuck in the fifties or something when he and Vincent were kids and god knows how long it had been since then… Well, he was god-damned sick of 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane', that was for sure.

Bo could remember the first time he'd seen that goddamn movie. The one and only time he'd attempted to take Vincent anywhere with him, when they were thirteen probably, and it was summer and it was way too fuckin' hot to do much of anything. He'd nagged his mom for ten dollars so he could go to the movies, didn't really give a damn what was showing, just so long as he could get away from the fucking house and smell of warm wax. Clumsy thirteen year old kids with no friends are angry and don't tend to give much of a fuck about anything, so when Bo had propelled himself through the front door he tripped right over his brother. He was sat on the porch drawing something, probably a lizard or some shit until it got fucked up by his brother half falling on top of him. Well, the movies are no fun alone anyway… And Vincent was the kind of dumb shit kid that took everything to heart, so Bo had dragged him along. They were jeered out of the place twenty minutes into the movie though, when the mask mom had made that morning started melting. They probably would have made it out without incident if it weren't for Vincent's fuckin' selective mutism. They both got the belt that night for "further damaging this family's reputation". Dad had never actually said that it had all gone downhill from when they were born, but there it was.

That first time though, the first time he'd gotten the movies working on his own and arranged the first few waxworks, rigged the lights and all that, he'd dragged Vincent out again. And he was so pleased sat there surrounded by his art, watching 'What Ever Happened To Baby Jane' he actually fuckin' laughed. That was probably the most noise Bo had ever heard him make, big fuckin' kid.

Well, whatever. To hell with reminiscing, it was almost dark and the truck had cleared the creek, meandering up Main Street toward the museum now. Ambrose had a way of doing that to Bo. It'd say 'Hey. You remember that?' and he _would_ remember, and Ambrose would sit tight and wait for him to finish, bright little lights twinkling away.

The pickup was kicked up a gear again, milk bottles clinking together in back.


	2. 2 to 7

2. (love)

Love, well, love is a general term.

Bo could say he loved fucking, and that would be true. Hell, he knew it was true whenever he had a beautiful face or a good pair of tits tied up in one of the basements somewhere. He loved strapping their wrists together with duct tape and ripping it off, he loved having to breathe so hard he could taste dust.

If he was pushed he could say that he loved mom and he loved his father, but he didn't fuckin' like them. Mom ignored him and doted on Vincent, but he'd still try to beat the shit out of anyone who talked about her going crazy. Father yelled and brooded and grabbed him, but he'd made sacrifices.

He was pretty sure he loved Ambrose now, now that he was sure it was his.

Love was a lot of things.

*

*

3. (light)

"For fucksake, Vincent!"

Bo grabbed him by the sleeve of his sweater and dragged him under one of the electric streetlights. That strange, sulphurous light coated the both of them.

Lester watched from a little while away. It was another one of those 'twin things'.

"There aint nobody here!"

Well, Lester could have told him that. Lester could have been under that streetlight too, but this was another of those 'twin things'.

*

*

4. (dark)

Some young thing was hiding here in the dark. He could tell by the soft padding of bare feet on metal, and he'd been here often enough to feel when the atmosphere changed.

No matter, the sugar mill was his territory, not hers. He knew that the cell phones were flat and most of the doors could only be opened with the keys in his pocket. He knew which of the cars were unlocked, and he sure as hell knew that a pretty little thing with painted nails couldn't hotwire.

How fast was her pulse racing, hearing _his_ boots beating the metal floor?

*

*

5. (seeking solace)

Well what did she want? Pity? Did the deer dent her bonnet or something? Hell, Lester didn't know why she was crying. People didn't tend to stick around and cry after hitting animals. Bo would say that's because people are rude fuckin' sonsabitches, and yeah, he was right for the most part. The bigger the city they were from, the bigger the asshole. You could usually tell by the accent. It was as simple as that. But this girl wasn't from around here and assholes didn't sit sobbing on the hoods of their cars. She didn't even seem to notice his Chevy pulling up behind her. It was the click-slamming shut of the door caught her attention.

My god, she had eyes as big as the doe she'd just slaughtered.

Oh no, she definitely wasn't from around here; women from around these parts dressed practically. Farmer's wives don't wear no high heels or fishnet stockings or low cut shirts. Lust stabbed him in the chest. And the groin.

In all honesty, she reminded him of the late Miss Ambrose, and picturing that perfectly beautiful, brittle wax babe twisted the knife. Maybe they could stand together in foyer at the movies, waiting for dates that would never come.

She looked pretty wary as he loped over towards her, cracking twigs or bones in the mud. He was used to people being scared of the way he looked, though- that came with the territory. He was covered in old animal blood, after all. He'd learned that acting friendly sometimes helped.

"What… uh, do you need any help?" He slapped the roof, tried to grin.

Her doe eyes blinked at him, and it was plain to even Lester that she just wanted sympathy. She looked a little awkward as she feigned composure and swiped away tears from under her eyes, and Lester ignored the dark mascara smudges she made.

"I mean, well, you look real shook up. You want a coffee of something? You need to make any phonecalls?" Doe-eyes looked taken aback. Maybe that was a little too soon.

"Look, it can't be helped you hit that deer, it happens. Its neck broke, it died real quick- and I know, I seen a lot of roadkill."

She'd find plenty of sympathy with the Sinclair brothers.

*

*

6. (abandoned)

"What's this?"

Bo stared at the stout little thing held under his brother's arm. It snuffled and squirmed, so Lester hitched it up to readjust his grip.

"Dog,"

"Can't have no pets here, idiot."

"What's it gonna hurt? Tied up by the road a few miles back."

*

*

7. (heaven)

When Bo was ten, heaven was riding in back of mom's truck, with ice cream as a thank-you for keeping an eye on the half dozen slabs of wax in back with him. This was back when she was allowed to drive, of course. Sure, he wasn't her favourite, but nobody else would go with her. He held the slabs in place with a shoulder as Mom surfed the dips in the dirt road, sunlight would flash a Morse code message at his eyes through the mirrors.


	3. 8

8. (innocence)

It was a sorta coming of age thing, when Lester led him out of the forced festivities of the Sinclair house on his fourteenth birthday. Pretty chilly, for once, and long grass just covered the shotgun lying at the foot of the mailbox.

They sauntered along Main Street together, Lester with his gun slung over one shoulder, Bo with his hands in his jeans pockets and itching to shoot at something, both of them thinking they looked pretty fuckin' cool.

Lester led him off the road and onto gravel tracks in the dark and got him lost in the woods. And, alright, it was better that being forced to eat cake and stare at another fuckin' wax Fiji Mermaid from Vincent, but it was fully dark and the trees all looked the same. After a little while the tension started to get the better of him, as it will do when you have a lot of excitement and you aren't doing anything with it. What was he going to have to shoot? Fuck, who said he was doing the shooting? Lester could shoot him in the face and fuck the body and nobody would know.

At sixteen, Lester knew pretty much every inch of the woods and the roads surrounding Ambrose. This was namely because he was the "other" Sinclair kid, the older one who got kicked out of school before graduation- The one who carted roadkill 'round for a living. Back then Bo would talk big and lash out, but being just a kid, guns and mud and being alone with his big brother who always smelled as if he was rotting got him pretty shook up. He was along way from Ambrose.

Travelling in a crooked line for almost an eternity and jumping at the sound of his own breathing, Bo was ready to turn the fuck around and eat some cake- until the colourful stench hit him and he knew he could stop walking. The rotting smell that hung over Lester had redoubled. It burned his sinuses and Bo could tell without looking that his brother had led him all the way through the woods to his goddamn roadkill pit.

What was he supposed to do with that fuckin' gun here? Live animals stayed well away from this shit hole- there were too many ghosts here. All he could see was the pit framed by fir trees and the only people there were him and Lester. Bo was glad that at least he wouldn't have human blood on his hands so soon in his life… but everything here was already long dead. Very dead.

He could almost feel the smell moving around in the dark. Was he the one cracking those twigs? Christ, you could go cuckoo in a place like this, with your mind playing nasty tricks- if you stayed here long enough. Not that anybody but Lester would.

The sight of broken bones jutting out from the sea of fur and limbs and dark smudges of russet had bile stinging his throat. Lester laughed at the retching and whacked him on the back.

"You get used to anythin' if you're around it long enough," Big brother pointed with the gun towards a struggling, wet shape in the pit. "-mostly. Not used to that broken leg, though, huh?"

The gun was slapped into his hands with a mean sounding sort of laugh, and Bo's feet were heavy in his boots. A lot of things were making him sick. His arms were gooseflesh. It was a cool night, for once.

It might have been a Remington, Bo thought, or a Winchester. It was beat-up, whatever it was. The varnish was peeling and he knew that if his father ever saw fit to own a gun, it wouldn't ever look like that.

The animal was a fox.

"Gotta put it out it's misery, Bo."

The first two shots missed and thudded into dead meat and pelts. The skittering of moving leaves told him that there had been animals there after all, watching, but they couldn't bear to see any more. Bo heard himself swallow vomit back down.

Shells three, four and five broke up joints and split limbs, but shot six cracked the skull into a blur of skin and shattered bone, blood flying out to congeal with the rest in the pit. And that was that. With another clap on the back, they headed home, sick with adrenaline.

*

*

"We're seventeen dumb-shit, we can do this,"

His hands fumbled around the kitchen, knocking around dust. Nobody had been in the house for almost a week, and it was much longer than that since anybody had had the time or patience to clean it.

"This was what she was talking about near the end. You all thought she was just rambling on like she did but she was lucid sometimes and-"

A hand shot up and out and shook off a drop of blood- knife drawer, nice going. It hadn't been that long since they'd lived in the house.

"She never expected me to be the one to do it but I will, because I'm the only one that can and then she'll owe me,"

From the opposite side of the table Vincent's brow furrowed.

Bo was breaking up the beams of light that shone through the half closed curtains. He was pulling open drawers and cupboards and leaving them that way in haste, or irritation, or as part of some petty act of defiance. It didn't matter either way because somebody would be here soon, probably the police, possibly with child services in tow; and then they would be re-assessed and split up again. They would be dumped with new foster families even farther away from home and double that distance away from each other, and it seemed as if Bo didn't particularly care about that, but Vincent did.

He didn't really know what to do. He'd gotten the extra wax Bo had promised, he'd set the blocks on the table in front of him, and had felt awkward and straightened all the edges up. He would have been irritated if concern wasn't rapidly creeping under his shirt and beginning to clutch at his throat.

The stainless steel kitchen scissors glinted dusk sunlight into his brother's face as he held them up in triumph. He had just begun to perspire, and Vincent could see a pulse beat heavily in his neck before his head whipped around and he made for the door.

Where was he going with those?

"She's in the crypt. We need a crowbar too,"

The scissors were slapped into his hand with a strange, shrugged-out sort of laugh.

He knew this was coming, really he did; without some kind of an authority figure for Bo to respect (or fear), nothing was going to stop him from doing any little thing he felt like, or felt he needed to do. These replacement parents clearly didn't have any idea of Bo's strange and strongly impulsive behaviour. It got worse little by little because it was allowed to. Vincent was allowed an afternoon with Bo every so often, and every week anticipation would grow sickly in the pit of his stomach as he wondered how much more unhinged his brother had grown.

He had known this was coming, but despite that a hand reflexively clung to the gingham tablecloth he'd ruined and patched a hundred times as a child. The warming metal of the scissors dug in to the other, and he clung on for dear life.


	4. 9 to 14

9. (drive)

Mom used to say that life was a journey, and that everybody travelled along the same road- just in different ways.

*

*

10. (breathe again)

The three of them stood gawping, all as brittle and stiff at taper candles. Bo's shovel was hoisted high above his head, wavering, and Vincent wondered who would dare to breathe first. He felt as if he should do something, being as he was the only brother not to have actually helped kill the woman. She was sprawling out further and further by the second, blood inching towards their feet- Lester and Bo were probably too dazed and punch-drunk to care, but Vincent nudged them away and nodded towards the steadily growing puddle. It was staining the concrete. It wouldn't do to have it stain their shoes as well. After all, people were leaving, but Ambrose wasn't deserted yet, was it? Would it ever be?

They hadn't had to worry about blood or anything like that with Mom. With Mom, before, in the soft flickering atmosphere that emanated from that secret room beneath the museum, he could pretend that he was dreaming. At the funeral he'd sat silently, out of the way, as his brothers reluctantly read eulogies, feeling guilty and unfulfilled. But he'd felt much better in that workshop of sorts, curling mother's hair and painting her face beautiful. It was a perfect final goodbye. Mother would live forever, just as she'd always wanted.

But this time, Bo (ever the instigator) had bludgeoned a well meaning young woman to death in the back yard and Vincent was sickeningly excited. It had been a dream of a different kind. He'd been too stunned to do anything other than watch, but even that was covertly sexual, in a way- voyeuristic, and he guessed that it was no coincidence that Bo had picked out a pretty blonde woman with an impressive chest. Mother would… be ashamed, to say the least, with himself as well as his brothers, despite not taking part. It felt deviant. It was very real and it felt that way, and everything from the bloodied concrete to the sloppily painted fences and lime trees would be burned onto his retinas for the rest of his life.

"Well-" was the air Bo had stored up in his lungs and then forced out, followed by- "What're you two fuckin' gawping at?"

He grabbed the other shovels and gathered them up underneath an arm.

"Get it inside,"

*

*

11. (memory)

Roughly one third of Ambrose's wax population stared out at Bo from the wall in his garage. As polaroids, of course.

They were there mainly because they shouldn't be forgotten but were, and even though these girl's faces were contorted so beautifully when he'd taken the pictures, they all blurred together. Blue eyes, dark freckles, blondes, brunettes, heart shaped faces taped and strapped down in the corner all blurred together into a great grey mess. It scared the fucking hell out of him.

*

*

12. (insanity)

"Bo-"

Now, why tell him to study and then distract him? He squeezed his eyes shut and bit down on his lip. He'd been flipping through some dumb school book, probably math- which he could manage easily but always said was boring as hell, but it was the principal of the thing that got him. God-damned annoying.

"Yeah?" What is it now?

Dad didn't meet his eyes, that last time. His head pointed towards his shoes, and his dirty hair stuck up at angles. Mother had shut up wailing for once, so he had no reason to look so fuckin' dejected, in Bo's books.

"I need you to go get some milk for your mother," Christ. She never gave anyone a break, did she? He could taste blood in his mouth, and snapped the textbook shut. Dad sighed. "Take your brothers with you."

"What? Look, I'm going, aren't I? I'm not taking those retards with me-"

"Can't you do as I say, just this one time?"

The fact that dad wasn't angry at him for once spoke volumes, and he just stood aside to let Bo storm through the doorway. The three of them slunk out of the house that afternoon counting the change in their pockets, and they thought nothing of it when Lester said his gun wasn't where he'd left it.

*

*

13. (misfortune)

Bo couldn't really say it was just down to a lot of bad luck that so many people got lost and wound up in Ambrose. Bo was almost certain that Lester was more to blame than sheer misfortune, but he could reason that a guy who scraped roadkill off the tarmac for a living- hell, a hobby- he hadn't been paid in a long time- needed a little sport now and then.

The road diversion signs were Lester's doing, at any rate. He was really fuckin' pleased with that one- had a big ol' grin on his stupid face all day. Bo remembered him pulling up in the truck, shit-pleased with himself after someone had actually fallen for it.

"-_actually fallen for it_!"

Yeah that was real smart, Lester, real smart. So instead of travelling up the highway on their way to whatever inane shit they happened to be planning on doing, they'd find themselves in the ass-end of nowhere. Well, the sign said "Ambrose", but whatever. It was all the same out here.

*

*

14. (smile)

Vincent had dabbled in taxidermy when he was younger. Stolen library books told him that it was much easier than at first thought, and he was delighted to find how easily hair and skin could be stripped from flesh.

Bo shut out the caterwauling that haunted the house and ran. He ran back at dusk with his bag thudding against his back, smelling of cigarettes.

Bo brought him hares and carrion crows and foxes. Vincent stitched up the bullet holes, and then stitched them together.

Capricorn, chupacabra, jackalope; all grinning, all full of armatures.


End file.
